


Houses of the Holy

by MooseFeels



Series: Houses of the Holy [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Churches & Cathedrals, Cursed Castiel, Curses, Maintenance Man Dean, Priest Sam
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-28
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2017-12-16 10:05:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 8,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/860895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MooseFeels/pseuds/MooseFeels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is alone in the cathedral, alone with his broom and the rain and his thoughts- or so he thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The cathedral was dry and dark in the night. Totally empty. Only the whispering flicker of candles along the sides and the patter of rain on stained class to make noise- to sing in the space. In the day, the choir would come and fill it. In the day, the shuffling steps of tourists would fill it. In the day, the prayers of the nuns would come and fill it.

It was empty at night, and Dean liked it that way.

His broom was a dry rasp along the grey, stone floor. The dust and dirt of the day stirred itself into small piles. He scooped them up and threw them away.

Centuries old cathedrals only got so clean, but Dean did his very best to get his as clean as he could.

It was a weird thing, he thought, being possessive of this building. He’d never been particularly religious, but in the care and keeping of the space, he’d come to think of it as his own. The only person who seemed to know its crooks and crannies and nooks as well as Dean did was the priest, and the priest was his own brother.

They’d grown up wandering, their only company the road and their father, and after all of that, it seemed that the only place for Sam (bookish, brilliant, kind Sam) was the clergy, and the only place for Dean (bullish, dumb, obstinate Dean) was a minimum wage job. When their father had either died or disappeared (they were never quite sure which) one night, they came to the Cathedral, and the building had taken them in. Saint Eustace’s was their home. With the exception of their long black car, it had been the only home they’d ever really known.

The night was dark and deep. The patter of the rain was occasionally punctuated by the rumble of thunder, the cry of lightning flashing against the window panes. Dean sighed, and the small sound rushed through the huge nave. Sound did that, when he was alone in the empty place.

“Hey, old girl,” he murmured. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

“If you insist,” someone said back.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hide and Seek

Dean froze. “Who’s there?” He demanded. “Who are you? We’re closed. You shouldn’t be here.” His heart thundered in his chest, sure that he could hear it in the nave.

“If I weren’t here,” they said, “where else would I be?” Their voice was deep and rough, almost stony. Like they hadn’t spoken in a long, long time. “This is my home.”

Dean frowned and tried to echo-locate. He eased toward the sound very slowly. “It’s been awhile since we’ve done something like that,” he said. “Something like a hundred years or so since we’ve officially housed someone. I mean, if you don’t have anywhere else to stay, there are shelters I could recommend or-”

“You misunderstand,” they said. “This is my home.”

 

“Who are you?” Dean said. “Where are you coming from?” He was heading into the northern transept now, crossing near the towers and their lurid statues of saints and devils and monsters.

“Here,” they answered- he answered? The voice was too…the voice was not feminine. “Why don’t you understand?”

“Where in the cathedral?” Dean asked. “I’m beginning to think you’re a ghost.”

“Look up,” they said.

Dean looked up.

He didn’t see anything. He saw the high dome of the ceiling, the vault of it in creamy stone. Saw the way it arched up. Saw the angles of that high place and he saw no one in the balconies or by the organ.

“What the hell,” Dean murmured.

“Don’t be profane in your lord’s house, I understand he does not take kindly to that,” the voice said.

Along the space where the walls turned into the ceiling, carved ivy and animals lay draped in stone. A few figures- dignified saints and stoic angels stood in the walls. Above them was a gallery where the cathedral’s collection of martyrs were captured in stone.

"What’s your name?" Dean asked.

"The invaders  named for the angel of Thursdays," they said. “It’s a name I don’t hear often. I fear I’ve forgotten it. It was made of many sounds- some of them were hard and there was one like the sound of hail but other ones were soft like crush of wool."

The voice was coming from the gallery, and Dean ducked over to the wooden door that lead to the staircase up. It was a private gallery, normally closed off from the public. Only Dean and Sam and the choirs and the organist usually saw it- the occasional academic to write a paper, too. The space was fragile, and if it was not treated gently, it would soon fall apart.

"Are you up here?" Dean asked.

"Yes," they answered. “Yes, you’re very near."

"Weirdest fucking game of hide and seek I’ve ever played," he grumbled. “Look, if I’m up here, why can’t you come to me."

"I can’t move," was the terse reply. “The roof would collapse."

"What the hell?" Dean cried. “I swear to god, if this is a prank, it’s not funny."

"You are not a very good priest," they said. They were behind him now, very near. “You take the your lord’s name in vain in his own temple, nonetheless."

He turned around- and yet more nothing.

“Can you teleport or some shit?” Dean asked. It was beginning to piss him off- it was more than beginning to piss him off.

“I do not know that word,” they said. “You are looking right at me, you are not very smart.”

There was a wall in front of him, the grey stone wall with a figure holding a keystone.

It was not a statue Dean had ever paid attention to before. He’d always just let his eyes slip over it. It was of a guy, youngish. He wore a cape, fashioned over one shoulder with a large pin holding it together, a spiral for its design His hands were raised upward, supporting a large, trapezoidal stone. His face was placid in the way of statues. Stone eyes blank. Stone hair curling around a stone crown made of stone flowers with stone antlers reaching up beside the arms.

“Sam, this isn’t funny,” Dean said.

“Who’s Sam?” the statue replied.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This can't be real. Can't.

“What the fuck!” Dean shouted. “Sam, what the fuck?”

Dean would swear, swear that he saw the statue’s brow furrow, saw it’s head cock slowly to the left. It looked like it had always looked like that though, like it had not moved at all.

Like he had never moved at all.

“Who is Sam?” the statue asked. “He is not here.”

“You’re a statue,” Dean said, walking towards him. “You’re a goddamn statue.”

“I wasn’t always,” he said. “I don’t think I was, at least. I...I sometimes...I remember the grass. And fish. And the birds.” They pause for a long moment, contemplative. “I remember the forest.”

“I need a drink,” Dean murmured. “I’m- this is- I can’t do this.”

He dropped his broom and headed down the stairs, letting the thunder of it drown out the statue’s stony voice.

Drown out things like, “Please” and “It’s been so long since anyone’s heard me.”

Dean slammed the doors shut and locked them and practically ran to his small apartment across the street. Stood with his back to his front door for a long minute, staring out the window at the cathedral, panting. “No,” he said. “No. No.”

He grabbed the bottle of whiskey that sat on the table by the door and took a long drink. It burned, grounding and incredibly solid. “No,” he repeated. “No.”

He could only stay there a few moments more before he shut the blinds and slipped away, burying himself under his blankets.             

His alarm went off at ten the next morning, and he pulled himself up from his bed. He looked at his closed blinds.

“It was a dream,” he said to himself. “It was just a dream, man.”

He climbed into the shower and tried to remember the names of the angels.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam watches his brother, and he worries.

Sam had been fifteen when he and Dean wound up with St. Eustace’s. He was never quite sure what bargain Dean had struck with some of the priests, but they lived in an apartment nearby while Sam went to the school and Dean worked with the night maintenance. And time had passed and Sam graduated from the high school a year and a half early and moved on to college, where he’d worked as a waiter to put himself through. And then he’d picked up a degree in theology. And then he’d gone to seminary and gotten his masters in divinity. And then he’d become a priest.

He’d never seen it for himself, growing up. Sam wasn’t even sure he’d seen it for himself going into his third year of seminary. He was twenty four and a priest, working in St. Eustace’s Cathedral and he felt...happy.

Of course, because he was the youngest of the four priests who worked with the cathedral on a day to day basis, he had to take the six am and ten o’clock masses and he probably spent more time in the confession booths than was a good idea and he did most of the work with the religious education classes at the high schools in the area, but he was happy. He was fulfilled.

And he worried endlessly about his brother.

He’d woken up the morning and led morning mass and he was letting the choir into the gallery so that they could practice when he saw his brother’s broom where he’d left it. He picked it up and returned it to the maintenance closet, which had been left open overnight. It wasn’t like Dean, but it was still worrying. He’d seemed listless lately. Distracted.

Unhappy.

And for all the things Dean had given him, Sam wasn’t sure if he could let Dean be unhappy.

He came in at noon, joining into the mass being lead by Father Balthazar, sitting towards the back next to Sam. He smiled at him, and his brother nudged at him with his foot.

Dean had never held the faith, not like Sam had. Sam couldn’t blame him for that, though, not really. Their childhood had been a hard place, and Dean had been far more tested than Sam, had been placed in greater, harder stresses. Sometimes, in the dark place in the night, Sam would lie awake and think about the nights when Dean didn’t come home. Or the nights when Dean came home bruised and beaten and bleeding.

Night like that, Sam lay awake aware of all he had to atone for. All he had that his brother had carried for him once.

The mass finished, and they both stood. Sam smiled at his brother, but Dean looked worried.

“Are you alright?” Sam asked. “You look...spooked. And you left your broom upstairs last night.”

“What?” Dean said, yawning. “Sorry, had a weird night. Strange dream.”

Sam nodded. “Do you need to talk?” he asked.

“What? No, Jesus, Sammy, of course not,” Dean grumbled.

An old woman walking by looked up at Dean and glared furiously. “Father,” she murmured, bustling off.

“Dean,” he hissed.

He rolled his eyes and nodded. “No swearing, I get it. Jeez.”  He ran his hands through his short, brown-blonde hair. “It was just weird, okay? I’m just feeling a little off my game.”

Sam nodded. “There’s going to be a guy from the university coming tonight. Wants to do an in-depth look at some of the imagery or something, I don’t know, Balth told me about it. Just like...make sure he doesn’t jerk off in the organ tubes or something.”

Dean grinned and waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

Sam rolled his eyes this time.

“Hey,” Dean added. “The days of the week, they have individual angels?”

Sam shrugged. Headed toward the candles of remembrance, the display crowded with tourists. “It’s not direct from the book. Some occultist labeled them or something, I think. Why?”

“Which one is the one for ah...which one is the one for Thursday?” he continued.

Sam thought. “I think it’s...starts with like a ‘k’ or something. Kaniel? Kariel? I’m not sure. It only really shows up in the occult stuff.”

Dean nodded. “Hey,” he answered, “thanks.” He adjusted his jacket. “I’m gonna go check up on that loose flagstone. Seeya, bitch.”

And he was off.

Sam smiled, watched him go, and then noticed that there was someone waiting in the confessional.

He had work to do.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Names

The academic turned out to be a woman- a tall woman with dark hair and a way of waggling her eyebrows that would make even Father Singer want to go have a good lie down.

“Pamela,” she introduced herself. “Pamela Barnes.”

“A pleasure,” Dean answered, shaking her hand firmly. “Look, I have work I need to do. If you need anything, just holler, alright?”

“Oh, I’d holler for you anytime, honey,” she answered, grinning like the cat that had caught the canary. She snapped a photograph and wandered off toward a tomb.

Dean was alone with his thought for twenty minutes, only the low scuffle of Pamela’s boots on the flagstones to disturb him. He was wiping a window, convinced it had all been a dream when he heard it again.

“What is your name?” the statue asked, and Dean nearly punched through the glass.

“Jesus!” he cried, panicking. “In your name we pray,” he added, hurriedly.

“Is that your name?” they asked. “I think that was someone else’s name, too. The outsider said it often, with much conviction.”

“Do you hear anything?” Dean called to Pamela. His voice was a bell through the space.

“No,” she replied. “Just you swearing and hiding it poorly.”

“You’re the only one who can hear me,” the statue said. “I’ve waiting and finally someone can hear me. Please. Please, listen to me.”

Dean sighed, balled the rag up in his hands. “Hey,” he called back to Pamela. “I’ve got to...tube the organ or something. I’ll be in the upstairs gallery if you need anything.”

“Sure thing, hot stuff,” she answered as Dean tromped up the stairs.

“Please,” it pleaded. “Please. It’s been...so long.” Its brow moved in that impossible, painful way- always still, never moved, but changed. Obviously changed.

“Dean,” he said. “My name is Dean.”

Something like a smile came over, like the way stars came out- gradually but then so sudden. “Valley,” they said. “Dean, it means valley. Dean.” The statue said the name like it was something precious. A treasure on its tongue. “I have not known a name in so long. I have had no call to use one. Dean.”

“Yeah,” he answered, “yeah, I’m still not sure I’m not having a...stroke or something, so don’t wear it out, okay?”

“What is stroke?” the statue asked.

“It’s when your brain explodes,” Dean answered. “And you don’t remember yours?”

“My what?”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Your name,” he replied. “You don’t remember?”

“It was not really my name,” the statue answered. “My language is not spoken anymore, my name died with it. I just have what the outsiders called me. I do not even have that anymore, not really. I can not...it is like it is a horse waiting to charge the field. It is waiting but it will not charge.”

Dean wiped his face with his hand, exhausted and frustrated and scared. “What was your language? What were the outsiders? What- what the hell?”

“I have lost those names, too. I have lost...everything. Please. I am a man without...without anything,” the statue said, stony voice becoming low. “I have been stone, so long. So horribly long.”

Dean sat down on the floor and buried his face in his hands. “Look,” he growled. “Look, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know what...I don’t know.” He pulled himself back up and headed back downstairs.

Pamela was waiting at the bottom of the staircase. “You alright?” She said.

“What?” Dean said.

“The building, it was shaking,” she said. “We’re due for an earthquake, too. Wanted to make sure you hadn’t gotten the vapors and needed a little resuscitatin’.”

“No,” he answered, “no, no, I’m fine. Hey, you know a lot about...stuff, what’s the name of the angel of Thursday?”

“Castiel,” she said. “Why?”

Dean shook his head. “Couldn’t remember someone’s name, no big deal.” He headed back upstairs. “Again, let me know if you need anything.”

He stood in the gallery and looked at him. Silently.

“Castiel,” he said, finally. “The angel of Thursday, that’s Castiel.”

And suddenly- strangely- he didn’t look like he was stone anymore.


	6. Chapter 6

Having his name back was better than being heard again. It was a softness. It made something in him feel like he was real again.

“That’s,” he said, “that’s my name. That’s my name.”

It was like having a heartbeat again. It was like being full, it was like having the animation back in his every joint and the motion back in his ribs.

The man- Dean- looked at him, puzzled. “Do that again,” he said, softly. His voice was gruff.

“Do what?” he asked. Castiel asked. His name like honey in his mouth.

“That thing you just did,” he said. “You didn’t look...stone. You looked like a...like a guy.”

“I did not do anything,” he answered. “I only hold.”

Dean had wide shoulders and thick muscles. Dark blonde  hair that was cut short, very, very short. He ran his hands through his hair and sighed. Looked back at Castiel.

He had dark green eyes that made Castiel think of something- think of a time in the year when the...when it all woke up and the streams thawed and the trees turned leaf-rich. Something about birdsong and the rabbits making smaller rabbits. Deep brown freckles were scattered over his nose like ashes thrown over the cold snow. He was so beautiful, and so alive.

“Why do you hold?” Dean asked. “What do you hold? Why are you here?”

“I hold the temple,” he said. He had stood there so long, with the stone and the weight in his arms and hands that he nearly forgot it sometimes. “The outlanders, they brought me here and they used their spells- the kind in solid words- and now I cannot leave. As long as the temple stands, I must hold it.”

“But why?” Dean demanded.

“I,” he began.  The memory was like an itch deep in him, something he couldn’t quite reach but couldn’t get away from. “I said...I said that they couldn’t take the land. I said that...I said something and then they did this.” He laughed, then. It burbled from his chest surprisingly. “They’re dead though, and I’m still here.”

Dean laughed too and shook his head. “Hell of a thing to say,” he replied. “You’re a weird guy, you know that?”

“I think that word has changed meaning since I heard it last,” Castiel said. “But I suppose that I am fated, yes.”

Dean chuckled, and then looked away, hearing the call of the woman downstairs. “I have to go,” he said. “I’ll try and be back home. Talk all you want.”

Castiel- who was named, who was real- wished suddenly that he could turn and watch Dean go.


	7. Chapter 7

Pamela turned out to be a pretty fun broad. After Dean’s shift and her research, they went out to a dive on the other side of town. She turned an old blues song on on the jukebox- “Hoochie Coochie Man”- and took back three shots of whiskey like she was breathing.

“Hey,can I ask you a question?” Dean said as she slammed the glasses down.

“Shoot,” she answered.

“The cathedral,” he said, “what do you know about it? Like, the history of it.”

Pamela shrugged, tossed her curly hair over her shoulder. “Been around since the Romans in one way or another. Started as a holy site for the Gaels and then it was...stolen, most accurately, by early Christian groups. They put a church up and then expanded into the cathedral. The people in the area hated it, though- hated the churches, I mean. Burned one of them down, even. All that insurrection just stopped though, and by the time the cathedral went up, the Christians were big enough in the region that if you didn’t like the cathedral, people pretty much shat on your head.” She took another shot. “And it’s been loved ever since.”

She looked over at Dean and smiled... _sleezily_. “So,” she said, “what’s a pretty boy like you doing a big, dusty-ass church like this.”

Dean smiled. “Where else should I go?” he asked.

Pamela shrugged. “I don’t know. College?”

He shook his head. “Naw,” he replied. “That’s never been me. That’s Sam- that’s my brother. Nah, I’m not smart like that.”

She smiled a little- a little sadly, and she leaned forward and kissed him.

She kissed him again as she held him against the door to his apartment as he tried to fumble the right key off of the ring to shove into his lock. They fell backwards into his apartment, and Pamela giggled into his mouth.

“Precious,” she murmured, slipping his buttons from their holes and nipping at every exposed bit of skin she could get to.

He slid his hands up her t-shirt, unlatching her bra. She looked up at him and waggled her eyebrows. “I’ve wanted to get out of that thing all day,” she breathed. Her skin was warm and soft.

She sat up from where she was lying on top of him to kick the door closed and strip out of her shirt and unlatched bra. Dean let his hands rest over her hips, her jeans still on.

“You wanna help me out of these, too?” She said.

“Please,” Dean groaned.

She laughed breathily, throwing her head back, dark hair trailing down her back. “So polite,” she said. Her voice like a song.

They fucked there, on his floor. She lay on top of him once she was satisfied and sighed heavily.

“You’re a good lay, Dean,” she said.

“I try,” he murmured lowly.

She was gone when he woke up the next morning, naked and cold on the hardwood floor.


	8. Chapter 8

When he wasn’t in the temple, it was a lot like dreaming. Time made no sense. Sometimes, he was there in the space and the actions of everyone unfolded around him. Sometimes things were too fast, and there was no resolution. Sometimes the organ droned on and on, sometimes the choirs sang interminably, sometimes they sang in short, sudden notes that disappeared suddenly. Sometimes, he forgot he was in the temple at all, and he remembered home.

He stood in the field with his bow in his hand, the horn at his side. He had always tried- he had tried all his life- to be any good at close combat, but his blood always turned too fast and he lost the world, almost like when he read the smoke and dreamed the dreams where the gods spoke to him.

He gazed out over that field and he saw it before it came.

As soon as remembering came, it slipped away, and he could only hear the drone of the man downstairs.

He wished he could do anything but stand and hold the cathedral. He wished he could sit or run- run into the forest with the smell of the rain and the trees and the deer.

He missed the deer.

He still believed, faintly and strangely, that it would all stop one day and he would wake up and he would re-join the hunt with his brothers, that he would sing the songs with his father, that the world would not have ended.

But every day, Castiel (whose name was still lost, the real name that lived in his body like a song he could not sing) stood and held the cathedral, and every day he felt his heart become heavier and heavier like the stone that composed his body.

He wished he had died that day,when he could still feel so sharply and so clearly.

Castiel was floating in that space between memories and time when he heard, “Heya, Cas.”

It made him wish he could actually smile. “Hello, Dean,” he greeted.

There was the sound of straw scraping on the stone flagstones. “Hey, what do you do all day?” He asked. “Don’t you get bored up there?”

“I don’t know,” Castiel said. “I just let it happen around me.”

“What’s ‘it?’” Dean asked.

“The world,” he replied. “It is like a great and terrible storm.”

Dean came up the stairs like the dawn. Came very near Castiel and looked at him, very closely. He blushed. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I mean, I guess you probably want your space. People must touch you all the time, right?”

“Not so much any more,” Castiel said. “They used to. There were the women in veils, they found me quite interesting. And there was the one priest- the one- the one who built the temple. He always- he always touched me.”

He didn’t always remember it, but when did, his anger was almost like being warm again.

Dean looked concerned. “What happened? Who did this? Are you-”

“Please,” Castiel said. “Please, let me forget.”

Dean looked at him terrified and sad. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

Castiel found himself wishing that he could open his lungs to remember the songs. “Can you sing?” He asked.

“What?” Dean asked. “No, not really. I never really had a voice. I mean, Sam sang in choirs and everything but I was never good at that.”

“Who is Sam?” Castiel asked.

Dean nodded, like he was recalling something. “Sam’s my brother. He’s a priest here now- kinda dorky looking, too much hair for a...for an actual priest, really.”

Castiel thought of his own brothers, warriors all. Castiel was the only one among them who was not meant for the battlefield, for all the good it did them in the end.

“I don’t remember their names,” he said softly. “They had names once and their names lived in me, but they- they all died and the temple was built over their bones.”

“Whose names?” Dean asked. “Did you have brothers?”

“I had many,” he said.

Castiel hated that Dean looked so sad when he looked at him.

“I, ah,” Dean said. “I have some work to do downstairs. Call if you need anything.”

He sang as he worked. His voice was deep and rough. His song was strange and wailing.

It was warm and safe in Castiel, and it made him feel like he was planted and secure in time.


	9. Chapter 9

Sam called Dean the next day and said, “Are you okay?”

Dean frowned as he wiped his face and glared at his bedroom floor. He had a headache. “What?” he asked. “Yeah. Fine. Why?”

Sam sighed into the phone, and Dean could perfectly visualize the bitchface. “You’ve seemed off,” he said. “Like...distant? I don’t know.”

Dean shook his head. “No, I’m fine. Jesus, okay?” He coughed the whiskey from last night through his lungs. “Just been having trouble sleeping. What’s up?”

“I just...worry, okay?” Sam answered. “Don’t fuck with me.”

Dean chuckled. “Wouldn’t dream of it, bitch,” he replied. “By the way- do you have anything on the history of the church? Early texts, maybe?”

A long pause. “I mean,” Sam said, “yeah. We’ve got, you know, all of them. Why?”

“There’s a statue, upstairs near the organ,” Dean sighed. “Dude with like...a loincloth or something. Crazy head-dress with antlers and flowers in his hair and shit. Do you know anything about it?”

“Oh yeah,” Sam replied, “ The Prince.”

“What?” Dean asked.

“Look,” Sam interrupted, “I’ve got like...a flock to shepherd or whatever. Come by later and I’ll give you a thing. Later, jerk.”

He hung up, and Dean just looked emptily at the phone and laid back on his bed.

His back hurt, his feet hurt, his legs hurt, his arms hurt. He wandered his hand over to his nightstand and fumbled for a bottle of aspirin. He shook two pills into his hand and swallowed them dry.

“The Prince?” he murmured aloud.

He dressed unsteadily and headed outside.

The sky above was slate grey. Cloud-heavy, a steady drizzle pattered on the streets. Dean pulled his collar up high around his neck and walked the minute or so to the Cathedral.

The Cathedral was built at the height of the technical advances of the gothic period. Tall buttresses supported the weight of the high walls. Stained glass shot through the grey stone walls, and color bled through them. Arches and curves worked with the points and the straight lines. It looked heavy and overwrought to a modern eye, but contextualized against romanesque works, it was graceful. The whole building seemed light and thin and lean. It seemed to fly.

She was beautiful, in her way, and Dean would fight any renaissance-drunk art history major who disagreed with him.

Saint  Eustace’s towered over the wet tourists that milled around in the courtyard, and Dean rushed past them to head inside.

The interior smelled musty and damp, but the coolness warmed Dean. He ducked through to the private areas to make it over to Sam’s office.

Dean didn’t think to knock, and he was embarrassed to notice that his brother wasn’t alone in the office.

“Oh!” Sam exclaimed, just as Dean began his apologies.

“And who is this?” A jittery man asked. He was shorter than either of them, with dark hair. He had heavy glasses. He wore a collar, much like Sam did.

“Dean,” Sam said, motioning with his head for Dean to come in, “this is Prior Shurley. He’s our priest in residence at the orphanage, he was just in for a monthly visit. I’m amazed you haven’t met him yet.”

“Please,” the man says, “call me Chuck.”

Dean takes the hand firmly and shakes it. “Heya, Chuck. Pleasure to meet you. Sorry for interrupting, I’ll come back later.”

“No, please stay,” Sam says. “Chuck is actually a preeminent historian on the Prince.”  

“Oh yeah,” Dean said. “Yeah, what is that?”

Chuck frowned. “You’ve...you’ve seriously...? Okay, yeah. So the Christians come to the region and start settling, yeah? The local tribes started getting really angry, started causing trouble. There were a few raids, and it looked pretty bleak until the Christians managed to capture a tribal leader- like a prince, basically. Legend states that they constructed early temples and sites with him ransom. Basically, as long as they hold the prince, the cathedral stands. The prince dies, of course, but they model a statue from him- the statue near the organ. As long as the statue is there, the prince is there, and the cathedral stands.”

Dean frowned. “Do you have anything more about it?”

Sam pulled a book down from his shelf and tossed it to Dean. “Here,” he said. “You didn’t really pay much attention when we did class trips as kids, did you?”

Dean raises an eyebrow at Sam. “Dude, I’m pretty sure you’re the _only_ one that paid any attention on those trips.”

He exits the office to the sound of Chuck’s laughter.

 


	10. Chapter 10

Dean sat down in front of Castiel, his long legs stretching out in front of him.

Castiel, the statue of him,....he was carved of pure white marble. About six feet tall. Loose hair curling gently around the air. The great vee of his arms mirroring the vee of his crown.

“What do you remember?” Dean asked, suddenly.

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel answered in his strange voice. It was as if he spoke, it was as if his mouth moved and voiced great words and great thoughts. His body had to have lungs to breathe the heavy words that fell from his stone lips. He had to have a heart to pump the blood to make his body exist. To make him work. But Dean never saw the movement, he just felt the slow blur of it happen all around him. Being with Castiel was like time having been constructed of syrup- everything suddenly very slow all around him.

“Do you remember the people that came?” Dean asked.

“Of course I do,” Castiel says. “They were strange. They had only three gods, but they believed they fit together, like an egg. It was very strange.”

Dean flipped his book open and looked down at an entry. “Do you remember a guy who called himself Zachariah?”

Something inside of the cathedral bent. It shook. It flexed, it rumbled, it moaned. “Don’t,” Castiel said.

Was it possible for a statue’s expression to grow stonier?

There was a long silence in the cathedral, and then Castiel said, “Don’t speak of him. Please.”

Dean closed the book gently and said, “What happened?”

Castiel didn’t say anything for a long time. “He was cruel,” he said finally, “and he made us bend, and because I would not bend, he made me stand tall.”

“He made you stand tall?” Dean repeated.

“Do not ask me more,” Castiel said. “I cannot answer you, I cannot without bringing down your temple, and if I do that you will never speak to me again. Please. Do not be cruel.”

Dean paused and nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, okay.” He got up. “What were you, before you had to stand tall?”

“I was a brother. I wasn’t made to be a warrior, like my brothers. I saw things sometimes, though, and my brothers appreciated that. It led them to much blood and much glory,” he said. “And they didn’t believe that- the people who came. They said it was the work of that fourth god of theirs- the one who was made of fire.”

“They said it was the devil’s work,” Dean murmured.

“Yes, that was his name. Devil. Strange god,” Castiel commented. “They said it was the devil’s work, the way it brought us our victories. But then they did something, and then...and now I am stone.”

Dean sits on the bench next to the organ. “You’ve talked about your brothers a little bit. Do you remember them any better? At all?”

Castiel’s voice sounds like he is smiling. “There were so many of us,” he says. “Our names are lost to me. The ones who came, they gave us other names. They liked to name us for their messengers- the ones with wings? Angels? I remember...I remember once my brother found a beehive, and he sang to them. He had the sweetest voice you’d ever heard, and he sang to charm the bees. And he reached inside and he stole their honey. He loved sweet things. Chewed mint leaves and knew where all of the wild berries were.”

“Really?” Dean asked. “Was he your little brother or-”  
“I was the youngest,” he answered.

Dean stayed there all night, talking to Castiel.

 


	11. Chapter 11

_The grass was green and moist under his feet, crushed slightly and aromatic. He wiggled his toes in it, the dew cold for some reason._

_He looked up and saw the grass stretch into the horizon, slate grey sky meeting it with heavy clouds. The air cold against his skin._

_Dean stood in the field and watched the clouds boil toward him until snow slowly began to fall, blanketing his bare shoulders._

_He stood there in the snow for a long while, and then turned._

_Bright blue eyes, crystalline and sharp. A cloak over shoulders. A mess of hair. A great crown._

_A mouth urgently forming words he did not know, he could not hear._

Dean woke up with his heart in his mouth, biting back to avoid the terrible scream that was trying to pull out of him. His hands were cramping, he was holding the sheets so hard. His chest was heaving. He was covered in a fine, cold sweat.

He looked at his clock and shook his head, and then his phone rang.

“Mph?” he grumbled into it.

“Dean!” Sam shouted. “Dean, are you okay? Is your building still up? What happened?”

Dean rubbed at his eyes and muttered, “What? Yeah, what the hell?”

“You didn’t feel that?” Sam cried. “Look around dude- there was an earthquake.”

“What?” Dean repeated, and suddenly a shower of plaster fell from the ceiling, dusting his bed. He blinked it out of his eyes and look around and fuck.

Everything was knocked over or rattled out of place. He looked at his window and the glass was broken out. “What the fuck,” he muttered.

“Look, I have to go, I’m at the school and- I’ll talk to you later,” he said. “Get to St. Eustace’s, make sure everyone’s okay.”

“Yeah,” Dean barked, throwing his blanket over the floor and walking to his dresser, gingerly. “Yeah, I’ll do that. Stay safe.”

“And you,” Sam answered, hanging up.

Dean navigated his way into a pair of pants and and shoes and ran out of his apartment, slamming the door behind himself. He ran across the square to the Cathedral and pulled at the door.

It was mostly empty inside, only a few people staying behind to help a handful of injured people. Amidst the loose stones and broken glass in the aisles, there were one or two people assisting a man who had apparently fallen and hit his head. A woman and her daughter were figuring out if someone else had broken and arm.

“Any of you called an ambulance?” Dean called, his voice large in the now empty space.

“I have,” the older woman, the mother, said. “They’re overwhelmed though- quake brought on some fires. To be honest, we’re pretty low priority.”

“Okay,” Dean said. “Alright, can you guys go ahead and get out of here? I don’t know how much more of this glass is going to break and I don’t want anything to get worse.”

They nodded, and the woman, her daughter, and the young man with an arm at the wrong angle left the space, moving slowly so as not to jostle his injury.

“Hey there,” Dean said, approaching the group with the concussed man. It was Chuck from the other day, and Balthazar, a priest who worked regularly with Sam. They were bent over an older man with white hair and wide, watery eyes. “Everyone okay?”

“Zach here’s had a nasty fall,” Balthazar answered. “Was standing up just as it came through and fell. Hit his head on a pew. We don’t want to move him and risk making anything worse.”

“There’ll be a board in the closet,” Dean said. “It’ll do. You guys stay with him, I’ll be right back.”

Dean was going to quickly, so manically, so desperate to get everything together and everyone safe that it wasn’t until he got Chuck and Balth and the other guy out that he even thought about Castiel, or the dream.

He waited outside until an ambulance came for the guy with the concussion and then he headed back inside and called, “Cas? Cas?”

“Dean?” he answered.

Dean raced up the stairs and was shocked.


	12. Chapter 12

Cas didn’t look like he was stone anymore. He looked real.

His hair was dark and curled. The flowers in it were pinks and whites and yellows. The great antlers of his crown were ivory and rich. He hardy and lean, skin tanned from sun and wind. His cheeks flushed, his lips pink. Blue, blue eyes.

“Dean,” he panted. “Something’s wrong, it’s so heavy. Something happened and now everything’s wrong.”

His arms were still outstretched the keystone still in them.

“Whoah, hey,” Dean said, moving forward to help him support it. “Hey, okay? It’s alright. It’s alright, okay?”

Castiel’s eyes grew a little wider, looking up into Dean as he laid his own hands on the stone. “No,” he said, “no, please. Please, don’t. You don’t- don’t.”

Dean looked down at him, suddenly so close against him that he could feel his body, feel his body heat. “Cas, what happened? Cas- Cas you’re real, what happened?”  
“Please, don’t, it’ll stop and you’ll be trapped here,” he panted. “Please, go. Go, Dean.”

“Cas, I’m not gonna let you be crushed or let the cathedral collapse or- why aren’t you stone, what the hell?”

“It moved,” Castiel gasped, straightening his elbows. “And I moved, and it’s going to fall apart. It can’t though, I won’t let it- I won’t let it fall apart, if I can just move back into place I can fix it and I’ll be stone again and it can stand-”

“No, Cas,” Dean said. “Don’t- you don’t have to do that, you can let it fall.”  
“No,” Castiel said, shaking his head, “no, I can’t, I can’t.” He straightened further, locking his elbows and knees and suddenly, just as suddenly as he had been real and made of color and life, he was gone. He was stone again.

“Cas!” Dean shouted. He hit against the keystone, tried to move it, tried to do anything, but nothing.

“Fuck,” Dean growled. “Fuck.”

No response. Nothing. Just the silence of the Cathedral and the wail of sirens outside.


	13. Chapter 13

His brother was kneeling in front of a statue when Sam got back to St. Eustace's, four hours after the earthquake trembled through the city.

“Dean,” Sam said, “Dean, are you okay? Are you hurt?”

Dean looked completely small before the statue, in a way Sam hadn’t seen in years.

He remembered the first time he saw his brother take communion. He remembered the way Dean looked obedient. Supplicant. It was the first time Dean ever looked...he ever looked like he wasn’t in charge. It was humbling for Sam.

Now Dean looked up at the statue with something like total heartbreak in his body and eyes. Something like maybe he wanted to cry. Wanted to fall apart.

“Dean?” Sam asked again.

“Yeah,” he answered, standing. “Yeah, I’m good. Just- trick of the light. Moment of- moment with God.”

That something vulnerable goes, leaving behind something like a pink new scar in its place.

“I’m good, but we had to send a guy to the hospital because of some heart thing and a woman hurt her leg or something. Everyone got out okay and near as I can tell we don’t have any kind of leaks or anything. It looks like maybe some roof tiles got messed up and we’re going to need to call the glass guys but it could be a lot worse. She’s...she’s sturdy,” he said, wiping his nose and eyes. “She’ll be alright.”

“Go grab some lunch or something,” Sam said. “You look like you need a breather.”

Dean shook his head. “No,” he replied. “Really I’m- there’s no other place I’d rather be.”

He thudded his way down the old stone stairs back into the aisle.

Sam coughed. It looked like the earthquake had shaken some dust around. Certainly changed the way the statue of the Pince looked. He’d never looked so pained before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short one- I'll try to have another chapter up in the next few days.


	14. Chapter 14

Dean couldn't decide if maybe he had invented the whole thing or not. Maybe, he thought, he'd imagined the voice to begin with, made the conversations between them up. Maybe what he'd seen, too, had been a fabulation.   
It had been months, months of repairs, of sweeping, of talking, of praying, in the cathedral with no reponses, no calls back, no conversation, no request that he sing just a little louder, just a bit more. It had been months, and there had been no response.  
Maybe Sam had a good reason to be worried about him. They’d had good reason to worry about Dad.  
Sam didn’t remember Dad, not really, and Dean was okay with that.  
Dean couldn't bring himself to make the noise anymore. To fake it.  
Pamela was with him again; her fingers traced over the shape of stones, the texture of it. Her pencil made constant noise, sliding and scraping and digging into the page. Dean could hear it, over the sound of him humming, over the sound of him sweeping, over his footfalls in the empty space.  
“You seem down, Dean-O,” she said, commenting into the open space.  
“You’re worse than Sam,” Dean answered.  
Pamela sighed. She shifted in the pew, the sound of her clothes catching on the wood making more noise. Dean hearing was improving, the accute listening he was doing in the space making it clearer than it used to be.   
“What are you studying, anyway?” Dean asked. “I thought you’d be done…months ago. Before the quake.”  
Pamela shrugged. Tucked her pencil up into the mass of black curls she had piled on top of her head for the day. “The cathedral is too early for how Gothic it is, basically. Romanesque was still fairly de riguer for the rest of the faith elsewhere. It’s a weird building and there’s not a lot of scholarship on it, just a load of exphrasis from the nineteenth century written by some local lord that never made it far out of the community. University wants me to write on something new; I’m sick to death of Italian works. Here we are. I was interested in the windows but…”  
Dean looked up. The windows were less sad now, in the dark, than they were in the day, when the light shone through the blue plastic tarp like some bad facsimile of what had been there, once. Now, it just looked like the masterwork was hidden behind them. He could nearly pretend they were just being cleaned.  
“Sam’s treatises not helpful?” Dean asked.  
Pamela shrugged. “Photos rarely do the real thing justice,” she answered. “But I still have funding to be here through next year, so I’ll find something else. There’s more here. I know.”  
A silence stretched out, between them. Not too long ago, she left him, in the morning. Not too long ago, the touches. The kisses. The feel of her body against his.  
It had been so good to talk to someone, to be with someone, who had been disentangled from the church, and now she was tied up in it as much as anyone else ever was.  
 _You need more friends_ , Dean thought to himself. _You got a crush on a fucking statue and here you are moping in front of a beautiful woman because it won’t talk to you anymore._  
“You just do art history, right?” Dean asked.  
Pamela nodded. “That’s what they pay me for.”  
“There was a historian here- did some stuff with folklore- before the quake. Haven’t seen him since, but he was interested in the legends that suround the cathedral,” Dean said. He sat down, in a pew, facing Pamela.  
“Who better to talk to about the folklore than the janitor on night shift,” she replied, smiling.   
Dean laughed a little at that. “You hear some weird stuff,” he said, shrugging.   
It ached, the silence that had come. He was anxious to refill it.  
“Folklore is a little beyond my domain,” she said. “The only one really relevant to me is the legend about the design- did you know, they used to claim that the angels told the missionaries to make the cathedral look like this?”   
Dean frowned. “What?”  
Pamela nodded. “Designs were handed down from on high. Story is unusual because no one was sainted, no specific angels are mentioned. Just, generally. Angels told them what to put here, so they did.”  
“I only know the one about the prince,” Dean said, and he felt the strange sensation of talking about someone nearby. “The pagan prince who was cursed to hold the keystone until the church fell.”  
Pamela shrugged. “Probably pretty good stuff, if you’re a folklorist,” she said.  
Dean looked at her.   
“It gonna be like this every time I’m here?” She asked. “I could start coming during the day; I know Benny, he’d be fine with me being here while he works.”  
“Like what?” Dean asked.  
Pamela rolled her eyes. “Feels like I’ve interrupted your date or something. You don’t seem…happy. Or healthy. Or fine. Whatever. Something’s up with you. You bothered by the fact I didn’t want to get breakfast or something?”  
Dean shook his head. “It’s not like that at all, Pamela, you gotta believe me.”  
“The what is it like?” She asked.  
“Since the quake…I’ve felt…off,” Dean said. “Just…just weird. It’s making me bad company, I guess. I’m sorry- I’m sorry.”  
“What do you have left to do?” She asked.  
Dean shrugged.  
“Let’s get out of here,” she said.   
“You gonna have your way with me again?” Dean asked  
“Maybe,” Pamela answered. “But you spend too much time here. Let’s go.”  
And what was weird, was that as much as Dean wanted to go, he felt terribly, as he packed away his broom and shut the doors, that he was betraying somehow, what had been here.


End file.
